Second RDNL User Panel: September 16th 2026
Badges and communities: input from the RDNL user panel
When is a digital badge received after a training worth something? Would you put it on LinkedIn, or forget about it after a week? And where do you find the communities that matter for your work? On 16 September 2026 the Research Data Netherlands (RDNL) user panel met for the second time to talk about these questions.
Badges for RDNL training
RDNL will award digital badges for training in the national curriculum for research data professionals. A badge is more than a PDF certificate. You can verify it and share it on LinkedIn or your CV. It also holds information about the training, such as the learning objectives, the study load and how you were assessed. To award digital badges, we chose Edubadges from SURF. We are also working on a badging policy that says when a badge can be awarded for a training.
We started with a show of hands. Eleven of the eighteen people in the meeting had followed an RDNL training. Seven had received a digital badge before, some of them at their own institution.
"At Maastricht University, data stewards have to take a data protection officer (DPO) course provided by our Law Faculty. You get a professional certificate for it and a badge. There are badges for other courses that are provided by the same training centre too."
-Yannis Stavrakakis, data steward, Maastricht University
What makes a badge worth having?
The panel was clear about this. A badge should show what you learnt, not only that you were there. It needs learning objectives and assessment criteria, and it should come from a provider people trust. Several members want to use badges to show their skills to their employer.
Laws and technology change, so a badge on GDPR or AI can be outdated in a few years. Edubadges has a field for an expiry date. But we will need the community to help decide when a refresher makes sense.
"With certificates it's easy to lose track of what you already have, especially after switching jobs."
-Sabina Masinovic, research data steward, Noordwest Ziekenhuisgroep
Badges and career paths
Should there be badges for whole learning paths, for example on medical data or for universities of applied sciences? It can help new data stewards see where they could specialise. Both a badge per module and one for the full path seem useful. That would need a clear overview of all training on offer.
There were concerns too. Some participants indicated that they learned a lot in their first months from open materials online. They would not want to redo training just to get a badge. What if you already have the skills? And should we worry that employers might only hire data stewards who already have certain badges? RDNL will look at how people can show their skills without following a specific training.
"We should not make other ways of learning invisible by putting too much weight on formal training.”
-Mercedes Beltrán, data steward, Utrecht University
Community profiles
In the second part of the meeting we showed draft web pages with community profiles. The platform will get short profiles of communities for research data professionals, such as RDA-NL, LCRDM and SURF ORI. The panel found this useful, but asked how we keep the information up to date. Good search and filter options should help visitors find the right community. And what counts as a community? We will explain that on the website.
"Local communities matter too. At Leiden, for example, we have a research data management community next to the Open Science Community Leiden.”
-Pascal Flohr, digital scholarship librarian, Leiden University
Continuing the conversation
We will use this valuable input to further the badging policy and the community pages. Some questions are still open. How do we show all the training that is out there? And can badges be linked to ORCID? All food for thought for RDNL. The RDNL user panel meets again in December. Many thanks to all panel members for their input!
